I’d been used to a green world; I never would go to New York in the winter, because I hate the cold—­and here I was, with the cold of New York and with none of the ameliorations in the way of clubs and theaters and the like.  There were the hills along Midas River shutting off the East, and hills to the south that Frosty told me went on for miles and miles, and on the north stretched White Divide—­only it was brown, and bleak, and several other undesirable things.  When I looked at it, I used to wonder at men fighting over it.  I did a heap of wondering, those first few days.

Taken in a lump, it wasn’t my style, and I wasn’t particular to keep my opinions a secret.  For the ranch itself, it looked to me like a village of corrals and sheds and stables, evidently built with an eye to usefulness, and with the idea that harmony of outline is a sin and not to be tolerated.  The house was put up on the same plan, gave shelter to Perry Potter and the cook, had a big, bare dining-room where the men all ate together without napkins or other accessories of civilization, and a couple of bedrooms that were colder, if I remember correctly, than outdoors.  I know that the water froze in my pitcher the first night, and that afterward I performed my ablutions in the kitchen, and dipped hot water out of a tank with a blue dipper.

That first week I spent adjusting myself to the simple life, and trying to form an unprejudiced opinion of my companions in exile.  As for the said companions, they sort of stood back and sized up my points, good and bad—­and I’ve a notion they laid heavy odds against me, and had me down in the Also Ran bunch.  I overheard one of them remark, when I was coming up from the stables:  “Here’s the son and heir—­come, let’s kill him!” Another one drawled:  “What’s the use?  The bounty’s run out.”

I was convinced that they regarded me as a frost.

The same with Perry Potter, a grizzled little man with long, ragged beard and gray eyes that looked through you and away beyond.  I had a feeling that dad had told him to keep an eye on me and report any incipient growth of horse-sense.  I may have wronged him and dad, but that is how I felt, and I didn’t like him any better for it.  He left me alone, and I raised the bet and left him alone so hard that I scarcely exchanged three sentences with him in a week.  The first night he asked after dad’s health, and I told him the doctor wasn’t making regular calls at the house.  A day or so after he said:  “How do you like the country?” I said:  “Damn the country!” and closed that conversation.  I don’t remember that we had any more for awhile.

The cowboys were breaking horses to the saddle most of the time, for it was too early for round-up, I gathered.  When I sat on the corral fence and watched the fun, I observed that I usually had my rail all to myself and that the rest of the audience roosted somewhere else.  Frosty Miller talked with me sometimes, without appearing to suffer any great pain, but Frosty was always the star actor when the curtain rose on a bronco-breaking act.  As for the rest, they made it plain that I did not belong to their set, and I wasn’t sending them my At Home cards, either.  We were as haughty with each other as two society matrons when each aspires to be called leader.